Judgment-relevant psychology and past experience only constitute a situation from which free choice proceeds

Evidence

You might think you are guided by moral laws, he was saying to them, or that you act in certain ways because of your psychological make-up or past experiences, or because of what is happening around you. These factors can play a role, but the whole mixture merely adds up to the ‘situation’ out of which you must act. Even if the situation is unbearable — perhaps you are facing execution, or sitting in a Gestapo prison, or about to fall off a cliff — you are still free to decide what to make of it in mind and deed. Starting from where you are now, you choose. And in choosing, you also choose who you will be. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 36

Categorization

• DEFINE: Characterizes how existentialism defines ‘situation’ and the free choosing self against the influence of past experience and moral law.
• XREF: connects to: The psyche becomes a real situation that conditions free choices; The compulsion power of one’s past derives from free choice, not its content — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1194; The past is a free choice made from the present project — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1192 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Freedom is meaningful only as engaged by free choice of ends #corroborates (0.85)
• Freedom and situation are mutually constituting rather than opposites #complicates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1164